A personal geography of landscape and place, art and geo-science.
Powell Mountain 9530 ft (2905 m) – 1988 ft gain 2021.08.13 It took a long time to get going today. Smoke from Sierran wildfires has filled Carson Valley for weeks it seems – now the typical summer atmosphere, and the heat has been oppressive, forged one-to-one with the unending haze.
Grayback Mountain 7510 ft (2289 m) – 1200 ft gain 2021.07.11 Well, that didn’t take long. I must have gotten a little sleep. It is, at most, four hours after returning from Peak 6632, which we summited soon after midnight, and Darren and I are headed for our approach to
Peak 6632 6632 ft (2021 m) – 600 ft gain 2021.07.10 It has been a strange week, but maybe this is just how they are now. A 5.9-magnitude earthquake shook our house, Portland hit 113° (and Gardnerville not much less), the Beckwourth Fire Complex continues to rampage, and monsoon-like storms
Nevada Hill 8,048 ft (2,453 m) — 950 ft gain 2021.06.14 Irreversibly altered by wildfire – 2021.07.19 I have been here before, a couple times. On those two previous walks, I have not been successful in reaching the summit of Nevada Hill. It is not a prominent peak; it is
Arc Dome 11,788 ft (3593 m) – 4005 ft gain 2021.05.14 Sometimes life gets in the way. As Second Friday approached, it appeared the workaday world required more that its usual allocation. Although I am fortunate to have spent much of my career working outside and have been overlanding since
Mount Irish 8473 ft; 2665 m. 2200 ft gain. 2021.04.11 It is April’s Second Friday, so that means it is time for a backcountry recce, but first, I get vaccinated. It is my second shot. Although I had no side-effects other than a sore arm the first time around, I
Continue readingNevada High Points #82 – Mount Irish Mountains
Mahogany Mountain 6979 ft (2127m) — 1510 ft gain 2021.03.27 Although I had been able to visit the Cuprite Hills on the journey south, fieldwork along the Gila Mountains of southern Arizona postponed our Second Friday overland recce for March. To keep our run going, however, we took to northwestern
Continue readingNevada High Points #81: Little High Rock Mountains
Cuprite Hills HP (Peak 6071) 6071 ft (1850 m) — 1503 ft gain 2021.03.10 When I first imagined a quest of climbing to the high point of each of Nevada’s named mountain ranges, as I studied my collection of topographic maps, it came as a solution to a problem. As
Mount Anna 6908 ft (2106 m); 1755 ft gain 2021.02.12 It is once again ‘Second Friday’, time for an overland. Darren and I hit Highway 50 in the late morning, expecting the forecasted wind to catch up with us later in the day. A storm was forecast but from the
Continue readingNevada High Points #79: Monte Cristo Mountains and Gabbs Valley Overland
Gray Hills HP 6665 ft (2032 m); 1420 ft gain 2021.02.07 It is a nice Sunday afternoon, why not get out to close high point? I have, of course, visited most of the ranges and hills near our home, so my choices are limited – I am basically running out